Thursday, November 01, 2007

NATIONAL NOVEL WRITING MONTH - excerpt 1

NOTE: So November is National Novel Writing Month, which is something I've thought about doing for awhile now. And I was bored last night so I signed up. I probably won't even come close to finishing what I'm writing but I figured I'd post an occasional out-of-context excerpt here and there to try to embarrass myself even more than I normally do. Of course, because I only think of myself, it's going to be more than semi-autobiographical. This first scene isn't the scene that happened to me that gave me the idea to write something, but it's something that really happened back in Milwaukee. I hope you enjoy all the swear words. They really help up the word count. I'm up to 1,397 so far and it's only 5:30am!

PS. - The whole "Jesus H. Christ" thing is totally made up, btw. Not only do I frequently say Jesus H. Christ, but my dad never said "hand me the fucking wrench." He has much better parenting skills than that. Remember, this is still FICTION, folks.

Chapter 1

It was really fucking windy out. One of those winds where your eyes tear up right away and can’t even fucking breathe and when you walk it feels like you’re not going anywhere because the fucking wind is pushing you back and you feel like you’re in one of those bad dreams where you’re running a marathon and your legs stop working just when you finally get in sight of the finish line.

Jesus Christ, he thought. Jesus F. Christ.

He hated the whole “Jesus H. Christ” thing and refused to say it because he didn’t understand what it meant. He remembered asking his dad what it meant once.

“Shit, I don’t know,” his dad said back to him. “Probably means ‘hell’ or some shit. Hand me that fucking wrench. Oh, sorry, I’m not supposed to swear in front of the kids. Could you hand me that goddamned wrench, kid? Thanks.”

The wind was blowing leaves and dust and twigs and Subway sandwich wrapper bags and all kinds of other shit around the street. He’d just left his apartment and was trying to decide if he should drive or take the train. He walked up to his car, got out the keys. There was a fresh-looking cigarette butt on the ground next to the driver door. Who the fuck stands in the street and smokes? he thought. Oh wait, they probably threw it out their car window. Still. Kinda weird.

He just about had the key in the door when he noticed the piece of paper stuck under the windshield wiper. At first he thought it was another one of those goddamn pizza places who’d sent out some kid to leaflet all the cars in the neighborhood advertising their great fucking pizza, so much better than every other fucking pizza place in the goddamn world until you actually order the fucking thing and it takes forever and a goddamn day to show up (especially if you actually have guests over and they’re hungry and you all want your pizza like RIGHT NOW and it shows up like two hours late) and then it tastes like fucking cardboard when it finally fucking gets there. Except this wasn’t yellow paper like those pizza things usually are -- yellow, the universal color of asshole businesses who stick shit on your car and make you think you’ve got a fucking parking ticket until you open it up and realize it’s just a fucking pizza place’s fucking ad -- or even plain white paper like they are sometimes. No, this was a piece of loose-leaf. Fucking loose-leaf paper. Like we’re back in the fucking third grade or some shit, he thought.

He reached over his car’s broken sideview mirror, kind of awkwardly so his butt was sticking out and for a brief moment he worried that some asshole was gonna drive by and ram into his ass with their fucking SUV. Don't laugh, it actually happened to a friend of mine, except it was a bus not an SUV and it was her car door and not her ass. But still. It could happen.

He grabbed the folded over piece of loose-leaf. It flapped all around in the wind like some weird origami swan in a nightmare. He unfolded the thing and finally spread it out on the top of the car so he could read the fucker:

NEXT TIME WHY DONT YOU PULL YOUR CAR FURTHER UP SO THERES MORE CARS FIT HERE

YOU KNOW, TWO CARS

What the fuck, he thought. Who actually writes a note like that? I park in the same goddamned spot every fucking day and no one has ever fucking complained before. Okay, yeah, I could’ve maybe pulled up another foot and a half or so but so what. Jesus Christ, it’s the end of the fucking world to some people.